And the distinction is not based on command: New army doctors automatically become officers, even if they don’t command anyone. Doctors are non-combatants, but fighter pilots are combatants par excellence, don’t command anyone, and are all officers.
I don’t think all these are invariant between armies of different countries.
To the extent that the separation between officers and enlisted men is universal, I think it’s probably because most countries militaries are modeled after Western first world militaries, which co-evolved over the history of Europe, rather than arising independently.
The fact that it’s usually so difficult to make the transition from Enlisted Man to Officer, I suspect has a lot to do with enlisted positions not usually providing good training for officer positions. Yes, in the abstract, a corporal may be deciding for a few people, a sergeant more than that, and a lieutenant more than that, but in concrete terms of what duties they have to perform, experience being a sergeant may not effectively prepare someone for the job of being a lieutenant.
concrete terms of what duties they have to perform,
Yes.
Why?
The usual answer is that officers “decide,” “plan” or the like. I don’t see a qualitative distinction between deciding, planned etc at different levels, other than this nebulous concept of agentiness.
I’ve never been an enlisted man or an officer, so I don’t have any experience with what either one entails, but at a sufficient level of abstraction, every job comes down to some combination of deciding and acting. The fact that officers “decide” for a larger number of people doesn’t mean that one effectively learns to make the sort of decisions an officer has to make by learning from the practices of noncommissioned officers and scaling up.
I recommend Absolutely American by David Lipsky, about the West Point experience. It left me with a lot of questions about what is going on in the officer training program.
The graduates seem well-trained, but still, they are ordinary schmoes like you and me, not some sort of stereotypical leadership figure—emotionally and physically strong, determined, foresightful, brave, etc. And why were some of these people sent off to the finance corps? Can’t the army fill the finance corps in another way?
I also wondered why there are both West Point and ROTC—both produce officers, so is one “better” than the other? Or are they thought to produce the same level of quality, but the two programs just offer a choice to the potential officers?
But to bring it back to the point of this post, the concise answer is that officers are trained to be a different class of person from the enlisted—an arbitrary distinction which may correlated with many characteristics but ultimately is a formal classification of soldiers into two types.
I don’t think all these are invariant between armies of different countries.
To the extent that the separation between officers and enlisted men is universal, I think it’s probably because most countries militaries are modeled after Western first world militaries, which co-evolved over the history of Europe, rather than arising independently.
The fact that it’s usually so difficult to make the transition from Enlisted Man to Officer, I suspect has a lot to do with enlisted positions not usually providing good training for officer positions. Yes, in the abstract, a corporal may be deciding for a few people, a sergeant more than that, and a lieutenant more than that, but in concrete terms of what duties they have to perform, experience being a sergeant may not effectively prepare someone for the job of being a lieutenant.
Yes.
Why?
The usual answer is that officers “decide,” “plan” or the like. I don’t see a qualitative distinction between deciding, planned etc at different levels, other than this nebulous concept of agentiness.
I’ve never been an enlisted man or an officer, so I don’t have any experience with what either one entails, but at a sufficient level of abstraction, every job comes down to some combination of deciding and acting. The fact that officers “decide” for a larger number of people doesn’t mean that one effectively learns to make the sort of decisions an officer has to make by learning from the practices of noncommissioned officers and scaling up.
I recommend Absolutely American by David Lipsky, about the West Point experience. It left me with a lot of questions about what is going on in the officer training program.
The graduates seem well-trained, but still, they are ordinary schmoes like you and me, not some sort of stereotypical leadership figure—emotionally and physically strong, determined, foresightful, brave, etc. And why were some of these people sent off to the finance corps? Can’t the army fill the finance corps in another way?
I also wondered why there are both West Point and ROTC—both produce officers, so is one “better” than the other? Or are they thought to produce the same level of quality, but the two programs just offer a choice to the potential officers?
But to bring it back to the point of this post, the concise answer is that officers are trained to be a different class of person from the enlisted—an arbitrary distinction which may correlated with many characteristics but ultimately is a formal classification of soldiers into two types.